testing

Our living room has been in desperate need of new throw pillows for a while.  Nothing is wrong with the old ones, but SOMEONE keeps hogging them. So for the past little while I have been slowly adding to a Pinterest board of pillow ideas (if anyone wants to be invited to the board, just leave your email in the comments and I will invite you, I would love to see your inspiration!). I had picked up some of these 18" pillow forms a while back - they have more of a feathery "throw pillow" feel than the ones we have used in the past.   My plan was to cut a bunch of 2 1/2" squares and then randomly arrange them for each pillow, but each one kind of took on a life of its own. The first one did end up random.  The fabrics were a variety of pinks, oranges, yellows, browns, and teals.  The backing of this pillow is a beloved Lotta Jansdotter print - I seriously love this fabric.  And I used Svetlana's pillow closure tutorial like I did on the last pillow...

Yay!  I have finally finished up my Fussy Cut Sampler Quilt . If you were reading my blog over the summer, you saw lots of posts as I made the blocks in the book.  I LOVED working on this quilt top and I think I prolonged the process of finishing it up because I didn't really want it to end. It is a fantastic project.  One of the best things about the book is there is a mix of easy and slightly-challenging blocks, but nothing is too difficult and none of the blocks have too many pieces.  After I tried (and failed!) to complete a Farmer's Wife Quilt (I am not that patient!) this was key for me. Another fun aspect was that the authors, Elisabeth and Nichole, hosted a sew-along on Instagram.  It was so much fun to see so many different versions of each block. The QAL is now over, but you can still see the blocks with the hashtag #fussycutsamplerqal . I also really enjoyed an excuse to dig deep into my stash to try to find prints to fussy cut.  M...

I am excited to release a new pattern today - it is called The Flora Quilt and the pattern has instructions to make a baby (40" x 50") or lap size (60" x 70") version.  It is now available on Craftsy and Etsy ! The pattern is based on this quilt I made a couple months ago using Alison Glass' Handcrafted fabrics.   One of my goals in writing this pattern was to make it easy to choose the number of fabrics that you want to use.  That way you can use a single background fabric (see Sam's quilt below!) or you can make your quilt totally scrappy.  The piecing in the quilt is beginner-friendly, but I would recommend this for pattern for anyone who has had a little practice reading quilt patterns. I had 5 wonderful pattern testers for Flora and I am excited to get to share their quilts with you today. I included a short quote from the emails that each pattern tester sent me.  They were all tremendously helpful and I love how each of their quilts turned out....

I'm a little late getting this Culcita Box Unboxing posted, but I wanted to make sure to get the post up before the end of the month. This month's box contains Tula Pink's new Spirit Animal prints and as usual, the colors are stunning. The pattern in this box, Staggered, would be great for using up scraps so I am going to add it to my to do list. I am particularly fond of the purples and oranges in this collection and the seals are adorable! I am halfway done piecing the quilt top using this collection and I can't wait to show it to you :) f you would like to pick up this month's box, or subscribe to a monthly  Culcita  box delivery, check out the options on their  website .   September Quilt September Fabric August Quilt August Fabric July Quilt July Fabric June Quilt June Fabric May Quilt May Fabric April Quilt April Fabric March Quilt March Fabric February Quilt February Fabric January Quilt January Fabric

A few weeks ago, one of my customers emailed and said that she was interested in a custom order quilt that only had Anna Maria Horner fabrics. Yes!  I suggested a quilt similar to  AMH's own Color Dive quilt  and got to work. Almost all of the fabrics were from my stash, but I bought a couple of blue and green prints to help fill things in. The quilt is 64" x 76," so it is a very generously sized lap quilt.   I didn't want the quilting to distract from the pattern, so I quilted about 1/2" on each side of the seams.   This was a hard one to put in the mail.  The color combination is so happy! I really love the pink and purple aloe print on the back. Finished size: 64" x 76" Fabric: Various Anna Maria Horner prints Backing: Pretty Potent Aloe Vera Batting: Quilter's Dream Cotton Select

I hope you are all having a wonderful weekend!  I have a doubly exciting giveaway for you today - two different bundles from Simply Lovely Things . The first is   6 fat quarters from Josephine by Camelot Fabrics. And the second is   5 fat quarters from Amanda Murphy, four of which are from her Folk Art Fantasy line. To enter the giveaway, just leave a comment on this post letting me know which bundle you would prefer.  And take a minute to check out the Simply Lovely Things shop for some super cute and very nicely priced fabric! The giveaway will run through Saturday 10/28 and I will announce the winners here.  Thanks for entering! The giveaway is now closed - the winner of the Josephine bundle is Havplenty and the winner of the Amanda Murphy bundle is Linda Williamson.  Thanks everyone for entering!

I had so much fun making this quilt. The fabric is Menagerie by Rifle Paper Co. for Cotton + Steel and I am in love with it.  The florals, the metallics, and the tigers, it is just gorgeous.  This Menagerie fabrics are from the September Culcita Box  and the solid is a Free Spirit solid called Mist.  It is just slightly off-white in a really pretty, creamy way. I'm sure this block has a name, but I don't know what it is. A few months ago I drafted it in EQ7 and have been waiting for just the right project.  I supersized the block and my quilt finished up at 57" square.   I quilted it with an organic crosshatch, which means that the lines are slightly wavy and are randomly spaced.   The backing is my favorite print from the collection.  Love these colors! The binding is a green FreeSpirit Solid (not sure of the name). The quilt is now listed in my Etsy shop. Finished size: 57" x 57" Batting: Quilter's Dream Cotton...

A couple of weeks ago my daughter went to a birthday party.  The day of the party I realized that I had forgotten to buy a gift so we decided to make her a pillow. The party was princess-themed and even though my daughter can't stand pink, we decided that was probably the way to go.  I used this tutorial .  And this one for the back. This is a slight variation on how I normally make the pillow closure, but it is my new favorite method because it doesn't involve switching to a zipper foot and it creates a flap to cover the zipper without having to sew on an extra piece of fabric.  The front of the pillow is quilt-as-you-go which helped speed things up, too. We wrapped the pillow up with some chocolate and gifted it to my daughter's friend.   Finished size: 14" x 14"

I have a rule for myself: I don't start a quilt that I am not going to finish immediately. While there are many things that I enjoy about quilting, the process of moving from an idea, to quilt blocks, to quilt top, to basted quilt, to quilted to quilt, to bound quilt, and finally to crinkly-out-of-the-dryer quilt, is my favorite.  When I finished up this Field Study quilt this summer, I completed one of only 4 unfinished projects that I have ever started.  And this week I finished up another one. This is a project that I started in October 4 years ago.  For some reason I got delayed and didn't finish quilt before Halloween so I put the blocks into a box and forgot about them.   The quilt is almost completely made up of Denyse Schmidt prints, I used 1 Lizzy House Pearl Bracelet print and 1 Juliana Horner print.  Denyse Schmidt is my favorite fabric designer and I love how Halloween-y her fabrics feel without actually having anything to do with Halloween.   ...

In addition to Cut Loose , I designed a second quilt using Washington Depot for FreeSpirit called Hashtag . The (free!) pattern makes a 61" x 81" finished quilt and is available on the FreeSpirit website .

I am very happy to welcome Simply Lovely Things as a new sponsor on my blog.  Colleen has written a lovely introduction to her shop and is offering a generous giveaway (more details at the bottom of the post).  I am increasingly shopping from smaller shops with curated fabric selection, and Colleen has done a wonderful job stocking her shop with beautiful fabric. I'm so excited to be part of the Kitchen Table Quilting community! My name is Colleen Regan and I am 51 year old kind of crazy, a lot of OCD, list making, fabric lover, oh and of course quilter/sewer! After being a nurse for 30 years I really wanted to do something fun in my life. Although retirement is down the road, we thought that now was the time to start something and try and grow it into a retirement hobby business.  My story is probably similar to many, I taught my self to sew at age 15 (I still have the dress pattern) and grew into a quilter. I totally love my sewing machine and really do all k...

After I posted my pattern testers' quilts last week, I wanted to make a follow up post with a few more details about my own version of the Eliza Quilt .  I had so much fun making this pattern and I wanted a little more space to talk about it. The idea for this quilt came from my Betty Quilt pattern. I wanted to do something along the same lines (but a little bit different) because I really enjoyed how well it highlighted the fabrics and how easy it was to put together. My color inspiration for the quilt came from the Martha Negley feathers print that I have been hoarding for a while.  I adore the print and it has such amazing blues and greens and teals.  After I picked the initial focal fabric, I picked several coordinating fabrics from my stash.  My favorite designers for coordinating fabrics are Carolyn Friedlander, Denyse Schmidt, Lotta Jansdotter, Cotton + Steel Basics, and Lizzy House and I used almost all of them in this quilt.  This is definitely n...